Aug 12: Buchette del Vino, Windows of Wine (WOW) built by wineries and wine shop owners, restaurants and inns in Tuscany when Italy was plagued with the Bubonic Plague pandemic in the 17th century, are small windows for contact-less delivery, that found no use for centuries but are getting back in fashion now in the Covid times, writes Subhash Arora who has not noticed any during his several trips to Tuscany but finds them perfect for contact-less dispensation of wine and other food items like coffee, gelato (ice-cream), panini (sandwiches) etc.
There are about 150 of these buchette in Tuscany-with over 100 in the Centro (downtown) of Florence alone, according to Buchette del Vino -Wine Windows Association, a non-profit, cultural organisation set up in 2015 by three friends-Matteo Faglia who is the President, Diletta Corsini and Mary Christine Forrest, to promote, preserve and highlight these pint-sized windows. Over the period of time, many names have evolved for these windows- Finestrini, Mostre, Nicchie, Buche, Porticelle, Porticine, Sportellini, Porte del Paradiso being just a few of them.
“Everyone is confined to home for two months and then the government permits a gradual reopening,” the website of the Association reads, “Some enterprising Florentine Wine Window owners have turned back the clock and are using their Wine Windows to dispense glasses of wine, cups of coffee, drinks, sandwiches and ice cream- all germ-free, contact-less!” It is a brilliant idea in social distancing that may be emulated by shops and take-away places in India as well.
Diletta Corsini, relives the Plague Pandemic as she quotes Francesco Rondinelli, a Florentine scholar and academic, in “Relazione del Contagio Stato in Firenze l’anno 1630 e 1633”, during the terrible bubonic plague epidemic occurring in Europe at that time, recording that wine producers selling their own wine through the small wine windows in their Florentine palaces, understood the problem of contagion. They passed the wine bottle through the window but did not collect payment directly. Instead, they passed a metal pallet to the customer who placed the coins on it and slid back. The seller disinfected them with vinegar before touching them.
Wine dispensers avoided touching the empty wine bottles brought back to them by the customers. Either the customer bought bottled wine or was allowed to fill his or her flask directly by using a metal tube which was passed through the wine window, and was connected to a demijohn inside the palace. The Wine Windows in Florence and surroundings towns have been thus used to pour millions of glasses and bottles directly to customers.
Matteo Faglia, president of the Wine Window Association, says, “People could knock on the little wooden shutters and have their wine bottles filled directly from the Antinori, Frescobaldi and Ricasoli families- the local well-known families who still produce some of Italy’s best-known wine today.” Italians are known to have gone to the 
wineries with empty bottles and got them filled with wine at nominal costs- a practice being followed even today.
Some of these windows have since been permanently closed. “The wine windows gradually became defunct, and many wooden ones were permanently lost in the floods of 1966,” says Matteo whose historical association has begun the process of mapping these forgotten relics throughout Italy’s wine country, marking them with a plaque by the Association to designate their importance and authenticity. “We want to put a plaque by all the wine windows, as people tend to respect them more when they understand what they are in their history,” he says.
“It’s kind of amazing, because people didn’t know about germs in those days,” said Mary Christine Forrest, one of the three co-founders of the Associazione Buchette del Vino- Wine Windows Association, established to document and protect the historic structures.
The windows fell out of fashion over the centuries, but the Covid-19 outbreak has inspired the comeback. Businesses in Florence are opening their wine windows once again to sell wine, cocktails, gelato and coffee, according to Lonely Planet. As the region came out of lockdown, these windows have been serving contact-less wine, Aperol Spritzes, gelato and coffee to customers.
The Association is striving to upgrade the List of these Landmarks and updates its site every week. One may use the interactive map on their website to mark the locations of known landmarks. ‘As people hear about their project and contribute information the size keeps on getting bigger and bigger,’ says Forrest who claims they have already documented at least 150 such buchette in downtown Florence alone.
For latest info on the location of these Wine Windows visit https://buchettedelvino.org/ or write directly to info@buchettedelvino.org
Subhash Arora
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